British rock 'n' roll group founded in Liverpool during the late 1950s by John Lennon (guitar) and Paul McCartney (guitar), with George Harrison(guitar), Stu Sutcliffe (bass), and Pete Best (drums). Although initially a skiffle band, playing a British variation on American folk music, the band -- which went under several names before arriving at The Beatles -- incorporated numerous American rock 'n' roll, rhythm-and-blues, and pop music influences in their playing and songwriting, most notably the sounds of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Arthur Alexander, among many others.
   By the early 1960s, they'd developed significant popularity in Hamburg, Germany, where dozens of Liverpool bands were booked into local clubs, and this soon translated to success in Liverpool, where their mixture of solid American rock 'n roll and careful music articulation made them unusual among the city's music scene. Sutcliffe left the band in 1961 and McCartney took over on bass.
    After taking on Brian Epstein as their manager, who got them a hearing from George Martin, the head of EMI Records' tiny Parlophone label, the band was signed to a recording contract in mid 1962.
   Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums soon after, and the group's line-up was complete. By the spring of 1963, their singles and albums were breaking all previous sales records in England, and they broke into America in February of 1964 with an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, followed by a whirlwind tour.
   The group had been signed to do a movie late in 1963, and through a miracle of good luck, they were turned over to producer Walter Shenson, director Richard Lester, and screenwriter Alun Owen, who came up with A Hard Day's Night, probably the best rock 'n' roll movie ever made. This film, a black-and-white documentary-style fictionalized account of the fishbowl-lives that the Beatles were leading during the first wave of Beatlemania, was popular with parents as well as their teenaged children, and critics loved it as well (Andrew Sarris called it "the Citizen Kane of juke box movies"). The mix of the four personalities -- Ringo's honest, earthy clownish presence, George's cutting, funny personality, Paul's pleasant, engaging presence, and John's snide, sarcastic wit -- won over audiences around the world. Their follow-up movie, Help! was made on a much bigger budget, in color, but it failed to repeat A Hard Day's Night's success, suffering from an unfocused script and a good but not great selection of songs. The group was generally as unhappy with the results as everyone else was, although it did make money and did have some entertaining moments. They tried directing and producing their own television feature, The Magical Mistery Tour, but the result -- outside of a couple of scenes and a handful of good songs -- were amateurish. And in 1968 they provided the songs for the psychedelic animated feature Yellow Submarine, and made a brief on-screen appearance at the movie's conclusion.    Their final break-up in 1969 was chronicled in the documentary Let It Be,directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with very impressive results. The group's exposure to movie-making whetted their appetite for filmmaking on a variety of levels. John Lennon played an acting role in Richard Lester's anti-war satire How I Won The War, while Paul McCartney wrote the score for the John and Roy Boulting comedy The Family Way (1966), and Ringo Starr acted in the film Candy, while George Harrison produced the soundtrack to the Indian movie Wonderwall.
    During the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Beatles' corporate entity, Apple, acquired the distribution rights to various movies, including El Topo and La Grande Bouffe, and made various films, most notably benefit The Concert For Bangladesh by George Harrison and Born To Boogie directed and produced by Ringo Starr, who also took an occasional acting role, most notably in the David Puttnam-produced period drama That'll Be The Day. Paul McCartney did the title song for the 1973 James Bond movie Live And Let Die, but it was George Harrison who became the most active of the Beatles in filmmaking, through his company Handmade Films, which helped produce such hit pictures as Monty Python's The Life of Brian and the fantasy Time Bandits.    The end of the 1970's also saw the lingering mystique of the Beatles parodied by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle and Bonzo Dog Band founder Neil Innes in the film The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, in which George Harrison appeared.

-- Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide